Know How This DFO Helps To Conserve Birds by Finding Their Names

Every year, a large number of birds migrate to Jharkhand including Jamtara from the Himalayan area and Central Asia. However, due to a tradition of bird hunting and poachers who hunt birds for food, the birds frequently fall victim to poachers and local villagers. The dwindling number of birds became a cause of worry for  Ajinkya Bankar, the DFO for Jamtara who came up with a novel way of protecting them. To safeguard the feathered creatures, he began a mission to identify birds and give them their traditional names so that locals could relate to them. Additionally, it was found that using the birds' traditional names rather than their English or zoological ones was more appealing to the locals. Therefore, the DFO with the assistance of local teachers, Van Samiti members, and members of the forest service in the district put together a list of birds with their traditional names. In addition, they have planted more than 35 species of trees, which is a natural habitat for birds. It was a tradition in the tribal society to carry slingshots to hunt birds. These were seized by the forest officials as another step towards protecting birds. All these efforts soon bore fruits. When birds were called by their traditional names, locals started correlating them with their culture. Gradually, the hunting of birds came down significantly. People stopped killing the birds as they could now identify them with their own culture and society.